Unlike so many of their rivals, the Boston Bruins haven’t exactly endured any substantial rebuilding in the past ten seasons.
Whilst the Boston Bruins did indeed miss out on making the play-offs in two of those ten most recent seasons, you can’t over-look the fact that they missed out on wild card spots both years by two and three points; not exactly the margins we’ve seen other ‘rebuilding’ teams miss by.
The past few years have seen teams like the Ottawa Senators, New York Rangers and Toronto Maple Leafs, just to name some of the Eastern Conference names, openly inform their fan bases that ‘there is pain coming’ and they need to stick behind their team despite the fact they’ll be undergoing major overhauls.
In that time frame, the Boston Bruins have remained consistently competitive and despite not picking in the top ten of the draft since 2011, taking Dougie Hamilton at ninth overall with a pick acquired from the Toronto Maple Leafs, they have continued to promote young players into the line-up and seen positive returns from them.
It’s not even as if there hasn’t been turnover of very good players. In that ten year stretch, the Boston Bruins have seen the likes of Loui Eriksson, Milan Lucic, Carl Soderberg and Ryan Spooner depart; that’s purely looking at their two most recent seasons not making the play-offs.
Countless other players that could offer some value have also departed; Brett Connolly, Adam McQuaid and Ryan Donato spring to mind among many.
Perhaps it’s in the player recruitment; the Boston Bruins have managed to draft wisely (for the most part) that whole time and whether intentional or not, make great use of the collegiate system as a developmental pipeline for their youngsters.
Whether this is at the prompting of Boston Bruins coaching staff or purely a trend away from the major junior hockey system in Canada, we don’t know, but it’s definitely been key in the Bruins’ lack of a rebuild.